Scott Aaronson is a PhD student in computer science at UC Berkeley, where he teaches a course entitled “Physics, Philosophy, Pizza.” His research focuses on quantum computing; his paper, “Quantum Lower Bound for the Collision Problem,” was recently honored with the C.V. Ramamoorthy Distinguished Research Award. Graduating from Cornell University at 18 made Aaronson acutely aware that grade-skipping does not imply infallibility.

Amara D. Angelica is co-founder and Editor of KurzweilAI.net and its daily Accelerating Intelligence newsletter. She was editor and researcher for two of Ray Kurzweil’s books, The Singularity Is Near and Fantastic Voyage, and was the original Academic Model/Curriculum Lead for Singularity University.